New ARD chairman against merger of ARD and ZDF

The new ARD chairman, Kai Gniffke, has spoken out against a merger between ARD and ZDF. The 62-year-old said in an inaugural interview with the German Press Agency: "Independent journalism is currently on the decline, and therefore the step to further restrict our diversity in Germany would be wrong from my point of view." Gniffke also said: "I I am firmly convinced that the journalistic competition in Germany has done us a lot of good so far."

The ARD chairmanship changes from time to time among the public ARD broadcasting companies. The ARD boss is the highest representative. The director of Südwestrundfunk (SWR), who took over the ARD chairmanship at the turn of the year, also referred to this: "When I look at what is happening around us in Europe: how the BBC is being made small, that France is emerging from the independent Financing of public service broadcasting passed, in Denmark broadcasting is being hacked down to almost nothing. Free reporting is also severely threatened in some parts of south-eastern Europe.”

A few days ago, the director of Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), Norbert Himmler, expressed his opposition to the merger question: "I think it's wrong to question the journalistic competition between ARD and ZDF. I think it is essential.” Himmler also emphasized: “It is important that we have a public service broadcaster in Germany that is also in competition at key points and therefore also promotes plurality, diversity and quality.”

The ZDF broadcaster boss added: “Imagine if we only had one public news program in Germany or only one broadcaster reporting on elections. That would be a concentration of power in one hand, which is really wrong, especially in times when it is being demanded that power should be distributed as much as possible.”

In the debate about reforms in public service broadcasting, the idea of ​​a merger of ZDF and ARD has recently been discussed more intensively. A trigger for this was a speech by the director of the largest ARD broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Tom Buhrow, a few weeks ago. In it he had suggested a far-reaching reorganization of the broadcasting landscape and also touched on the topic of fusion.

Media policy in Germany is a matter for the federal states. The federal states set the general framework for the structure of public service broadcasting in Germany in a state treaty. They also determine the amount of the broadcasting fee with which the houses of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio are financed - more than eight billion euros come together every year.

Buhrow, who held the ARD chairmanship until the end of the year, also suggested in his speech a round table that could deal with the future of public broadcasting. When asked about this, Gniffke said: “My spontaneous reaction was: Who is sitting at the round table? How long will it take for us to define that? What power of attorney do the people sitting at the table have? My concern is that this is a process that will take months. We would lose time.”

The ARD chairman added: “If I were Amazon, I would laugh my ass off and say: “Let them wait for a round table, which will then tell them what they can and cannot do.” We have to digital Drive transformation forward, ARD needs an update.”

When it comes to gender, Gniffke is rather reserved. When asked if he was gendere, he said: "I want to speak and write in a way that everyone can relate to. The wonderful thing about the German language is that it gives you the opportunity to address different genders without having to bend the rules of spelling or grammar.” The 62-year-old added: “That’s why I made it my goal to speak inclusively, but not with I, colons or slashes.”

The ARD is in the middle of major reform steps. The houses want to work together much more closely than before in radio and TV programming, also to free up resources for digital offerings. Shortly before Gniffke started as ARD chairman, the German Association of Journalists (DJV) had called for consideration for the employees and the program regarding the upcoming reforms at ARD. Gniffke had also recently drawn dissatisfaction from trade unionists because of a comment in a "Spiegel" interview.

In this, the 62-year-old had responded to internal criticism in the ARD, because the network plans to stop the ongoing program of a TV channel - and described the whole thing as "yowling" and "squeaking". Gniffke later conceded in a blog that other terms would have been better.